Friday, February 23, 2007

A Memphis Weekend

A Big Memphis Weekend

Throughout the calendar year, Memphis has a handful of weekends when everything happens at once. Memphis in May is an obvious one, when the month long festival peaks with the International BBQ Contest and Beale Street Music fest. Southern Heritage Classic Weekend is also a big event in the Bluff City as it falls on the same weekend as the Cooper-Young Festival, a 3-mile neighborhood street fair in arguably the coolest part of Midtown.

And then there are weekends like this weekend, when the soul of Memphis shakes off the past few months of cold weather (it should hit 70 this weekend!) and decides to throw down.

The first event to kick the pig was last night's Memphis premier of Craig Brewer's new film, Black Snake Moan, which was, in the humble opinion of this blogger, fantastic. The locals-only crowd made it a homecoming for Brewer who told the two packed theaters that this was the film's most important screening.

The annual Folk Alliance conference, however, will dominate the rest of the weekend. An international gathering held each February, the conference is, according to Folk Alliance's website: "the annual town hall of the folk community. Nearly 2000 members of Folk Alliance attend each year to conduct business and connect with their peers. What this means is that Downtown Memphis is teeming with musicians."

But events are not limited to downtown this weekend. Goner Records, in Cooper-Young, is throwing their own folk fest today at 5pm, featuring Peter Case, formerly of the Plimsouls, and Tommy Erdelyi, an ex-Ramone, and then again tomorrow with our very own Harlan T Bobo.

The Hi-Tone tonight is hosting a benefit show for a handful of local musicians trying to get to Austin next month for SXSW music conference and festival. The show is $8 and features Snowglobe, Giant Bear, Jamie Randolph and the Bloodsuckers, soul band Jump Back Jake, and Holly Cole.